I have a recipe for Cherry Oatmeal Bars and it calls for 1/2 cup of balsamic vinegar. I don't have any and I was wondering if I can't substitute anything else instead. The other ingredients are Cherry pie filling, butter, brown sugar, soda, eggs, flour, quick oats and pistachio nuts.

Do you have apple or cider vinegar, or any other wine vinegar? I'd go with that. The thing is to find out what the purpose of vinegar in the recipe. Sinse I've never made anything like that I have no clue what it's for. Normally vinegar is used to react with soda. But half a cup is a lot, it might be for some other puropse too. Brown sugar is not acidic enough by any strech.

Do you have apple or cider vinegar, or any other wine vinegar? I'd go with that. The thing is to find out what the purpose of vinegar in the recipe. Sinse I've never made anything like that I have no clue what it's for. Normally vinegar is used to react with soda. But half a cup is a lot, it might be for some other puropse too. Brown sugar is not acidic enough by any strech.

Half a cup seem alot to me too, I think I will find another recipe. Thanks.

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Rogers

Oh gosh, I didn't even realize the recipe called for so much vinegar! Yes, you definitely need to replace the liquid. Let's see...it's hard to tell what kind of liquid would work best without knowing what the end product is supposed to taste like. You could use water for some, orange juice, buttermilk, yogurt thinned with milk...

Brown sugar does react with baking soda, to the best of my knowledge. Baking soda is usually the leavener in cookie recipes and brown sugar is often the primary acidic ingredient. Since the recipe is for "bars" the brown sugar may be enough with the addition of a little more acid (a few squeezes of orange juice) if the bars are supposed to be dense; if they are supposed to be cakey, something else is probably needed.

The cherry pie filling may be acidic too, since cherries are naturally acidic.